


The Name Game

by Drag0nst0rm



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Dwarf Culture & Customs, F/M, Female Bilbo Baggins, Female Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield, Hopeful Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:28:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28465335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drag0nst0rm/pseuds/Drag0nst0rm
Summary: Dwarves reveal their true names under only two circumstances:If they meet the One their Maker has destined them for.Or if they lie dying having never done so.Thorin is pretty sure he's doomed to the latter option.
Relationships: Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield
Comments: 35
Kudos: 432





	The Name Game

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MegMarch1880](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MegMarch1880/gifts).



He is given the name Thorin three days after his birth when he is presented to his future people. He earns the name Oakenshield in battle.

But his real name, his true name, is his from the moment the Maker first thought of him, and he knows it from the first time he closes his eyes and sleeps, just as it is made known to all dwarves who they truly are.

He sees it in his dreams, every night. Sometimes, the name alone; sometimes, later, he sees it through the midst of battle and fire.

He is rock-that-life-clings to.

He sees it every night: a young oak tree pushing up through a rock, surviving where no tree should, making faint cracks in the stone as it grows.

It is not a bad name. There is no shame in it.

But it is an odd name for a prince of Erebor. His people are not scrabbling for survival. They have plenty and to spare. They are gold and diamond and mithril, not bare rock, and their lives are flourishing, not desperately yearning for more.

Nor is he a sickly child, barely clinging to life. He is strong and hale and everything a prince should be.

It is not a bad name, but he does not understand.

He does not understand until the dragon comes, and his grandmother is devoured by the flames, but he is only singed.

He does not understand until the battle comes, and his grandfather is felled, but he is only injured.

He does not understand until the aftermath, when his brother’s injuries fester until he dies, but Thorin’s heal cleanly.

He does not understand until the final count is taken, when it is realized that his father in grief-stricken madness has wandered off to die, but Thorin is still there.

He does not understand until his mother wastes away in the long trek to the Blue Mountains, but he trudges forward, ever strong.

He is the rock that life clings to. He survives, even as his family falls around him.

He is the rock that life clings to. It is him that his sister turns to, holding tightly, when the nightmares come.

He is the rock that life clings to. He upholds his people, scraping up plans and resources, and a way forward, always forward.

He is the rock that life clings to.

He can’t help but note grimly, though, that he’s starting to understand why in his dreams, the rock is always cracked.

No one knows his name. 

Someday, if his One finds him, she will know it without being told. When she says it, then it may be shared for all to know.

Someday, if he finds his One, he will know her name. When he says it, then it too may be shared for all to know.

Or, of course, if he lies dying, he may choose to share it with whoever is nearby so that he may die known to more than his Maker.

He’s starting to think that will probably happen first.

He dreams of the tree and the stone, but increasingly, the mountain’s edge that the tree is perched on is Erebor.

He is not old, not quite, not yet, but the tree in his dreams has grown large, and the cracks have grown larger.

He is rock-that-life-clings-to, but he is no elf for it to cling overlong. Its grip will fail in a few decades – or sooner, if he cannot scrape together more food for these long winters – and he wants to leave more to his people than this barren life.

He has had enough of holding his people as they die and hearing them whisper their names to him.

When he meets Bella Baggins, he does not know her name.

He knows her people call her Bella after her mother and Baggins after her father, and he names her ‘burglar’ for the prowess she will hopefully display in the field, but the name that makes up her being is not revealed to him, if hobbits even have them.

Men do not, he knows. To men it is given to determine their own fates, their own being.

He is not sure about hobbits.

He is not sure about a lot of things about hobbits, right up until she saves him from Azog.

Or further, right up until a few weeks later, when she finds him once more in peril, this time in the Elf King’s dungeons, and he hears her exasperated whisper in the dark after he has once again resisted answering any questions.

“You’re as stubborn as a tree growing out of bare rock,” she huffs, and Thorin freezes.

“What?” he says hoarsely.

“I suppose that was a rather hobbitish metaphor, wasn’t it?” she sighs, and then she carries on talking, but Thorin never notices.

He cannot believe it is a coincidence.

“What kind of tree?” he asks, interrupting.

“Oh, I don’t know!” she cries. “An oak tree, I suppose, one that’s about to break that rock apart and topple over the mountain despite all his stubbornness, especially if you don’t stop whatever nonsense you’re thinking about and pay attention to me.”

She is exactly right in every particular.

(More right than he knows.)

She knows his name, but he does not know hers.

Does that mean that he is her One, but she is not his? Does it mean that hobbits have no such names? 

He doesn’t know, and she’s right, there is no time to speculate on it now. The quest must come first.

She doesn’t even realize what she knows.

There’s no need to tell her, he convinces himself. A dwarf would know immediately, but she is no dwarf, and if he cannot reciprocate, there is no reason to reveal this secret to her. No need at all.

He doesn’t know her name.

But he wants to.

When he lies dying after the battle, he grips her arm and pulls her close that he may say his name in full despite the fact that she already knows. He wants her to know that she knows. He wants to say it, for once in his life.

But she grips his wrist in turn, and she hisses, in a voice that will most certainly carry to the healers, “You are a rock that life clings to, and you are too stubborn to die, or you are not the man I went on this thrice forsaken quest with.”

There is power in her words, more power than she perhaps intends, and for just a moment, his gaze falls to her pocket.

Ringbearer, he thinks, though his fever hazed mind barely knows why. “The-gold-weighs-little,” he mumbles.

She frowns. “What? Thorin, are you listening to me?”

The ring weighs so little in her pocket, and the treasure weighs so lightly in her mind, and she carries treasures of hope and forgiveness like they are nothing at all. He can see it now, and he wonders why he couldn’t before.

His people have fallen silent around them. He hopes someone explains it to her. He does not think he can stay awake much longer.

But he does think, with his name anchored on her lips, that he will wake up.

Life may cling a little longer yet.


End file.
